MEANWHILE: Social media sheds its adolescence

When I first began in Indian journalism, over two years ago, social media was an afterthought.

Everyone might have been on Facebook, but it was still a very adolescent forum, in every sense of the term.

There were also plenty of journalists on Twitter - the Mumbai attacks in 2008 had brought many to the medium - but it was mostly an echo-chamber.

The digital masses seem to veer between the progressiveness of a gay pride parade to the retrograde attitudes of a khap panchayat (File photo)

(Some might argue it still is, just a much larger one).

If there was something happening on Twitter - such as Mumbaikars crowd-sourcing a spreadsheet for aid in the aftermath of the Zaveri bazaar blasts - I could be fairly certain that turning it into a news story for the paper was something no other reporter was doing.

This is no longer true.

Social media has gone from idle dalliance to newsmaker in 2013.

Twitter and Facebook have been both the source of headlines - think of Pappu and Feku - as well as the medium for reportage that has yet to turn up in the mainstream press.

RTs and 'likes' are also becoming an important measure alongside things like circulation and TRPs.

This is dangerous; English-language journalists already live in a little bubble without the added solipsism of a still-elite medium like the internet.

But it's also promising, since it ends the tyranny of inch-space and air-time.

Add in the fear of being judged by the digital masses, who seem to veer between the progressiveness of a gay pride parade and the retrograde attitudes of a khap panchayat, and you've got a new dimension of Indian society that cannot be ignored.